'At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity'.
On the evening of December 22, 1988, one week after his 44th birthday, Chico Mendes was murdered at his home in the Amazon rainforest. He died in an attempt to save his beloved home from people who saw only temporary profit in its eternal destruction. His death would bring a human face to the plight of the forest, and of the people who respect and rely on it.
Born in 1944, Chico grew up in a family of rubber tappers. A sustainable form of agriculture, rubber tapping is a way of extracting sap from rubber trees, to be used in various industries. By the 1970's many rubber tappers found themselves pushed off their lands by cattle ranchers, eager to exploit the vast wealth potential in cutting down the forests and replacing it with pasture land and strip mines. As in other countries, the process left only wasteland where once mighty forests had stood for millions of years.
Chico began organising groups of rubber tappers in protest against the expansion of the ranches into the forest. By the early 1980's he had moved into politics, and was elected to the local council in his home town of Xapuri. As president of the Xapuri Rural Workers Union, he fought for the creation of forest reserves, harvesting rubber and Brazilian nuts, to be managed sustainably by local communities. The system would allow them to profit from the forests, but also to live among it, as part of its grand systems.
In October 1985, Chico led the first Rubber Tappers National Meeting, and established the Rubber Tappers National Council (CNS). Under his leadership, the rubber tappers struggle gained national and international exposure, strengthened by the proposal of the "Forest People Alliance". This proposal aimed to unite the common interests of the indigenous communities and the rubber tappers in preserving the Amazon forest. It would also work at the creation of extractive reserves in order to protect the indigenous areas and the forest, and ensure the rubber tappers' agrarian reform.
2 years later, having already shown the UN the environmental devastation and human rights atrocities brought about by projects financed from international investment, Chico flew to Washington and successfully appealed to the Inter-American Development Bank to have further road projects in the area suspended and then re-negotiated. He argued that these projects would only end it total disaster unless they took into account the needs of the forest and the local communities living there.
On one hand Chico was awarded national and international acknowledgements for his work, including 2 international environmental awards. This would seal his fate as an icon of the green movement not just in South America, but globally.
On the other, he was accused by ranchers and local politicians of hindering what they perceived as 'the nations' progress, despite how narrow their interpretation of that was. He began to receive more threats and attacks from the newly formed UDR (Rural "Democratic" Union). Despite this, he continued to travel the country attending seminars and lectures, highlighting the plight of the workers in the face of the ranchers continued onslaughts into the Amazon.
In 1988, he managed to set up the first extractive reserve in the state of Acre. He also successfully stopped a massive deforestation project led by rancher Darly Alves da Silva. From then on, the death threats became very serious. He had been jailed, fined, threatened but throughout, his grass roots support only increased. Chico himself made it very clear to the police department and government officials that his life was in danger and that he needed protection, to the point of giving out the names of his probable murderers.
Within a few months, Chico was assassinated by gunshot at his Xapuri home. In December, 1990 rancher Darcy Alves Pereira and his son Darli Alves were sentenced to 19 years in prison for their part in Mendes' assassination. In February, 1992, they won a retrial, but remained in prison. In 1993, they staged an escape, but Darcy was recaptured and as of 2004, was still in the jungle.
At one level, Chico's is a David and Goliath story - the poor fighting for their rights against a corrupt industrial and political elite - one that, granted, ended in tragedy for him and his family.
His story brings to the fore the central question, 'what does progress entail?' Is it about a quick buck at the expense of all else? Or is it about long term prosperity and quality of life for people in the context of the real world around them?
What makes his story one for the world to stand up and take note of, is the importance of the area he fought to protect, not just for humanity, but for the earth system entire. He was able to match the cause of the earth with the cause of the people who live there, and show that both are worth fighting for. The global environmental problems we face in the new millennium are as much a human tragedy as they are an environmental one. Their fates are inextricably intertwined.
The rainforests of the world have become symbols to us. We view them as natural Eden’s destroyed by human 'progress'. The reality is far worse. They are absolutely essential to the prosperity of Life on earth. In fighting for them we are fighting for our collective future, and our souls. And no one stood up for that ideal more than Chico Mendes.
In his own words: 'To avoid the Amazon to become a desert in benefit of a half dozen landowners and, on the other hand, to defend the Amazon, is to make it an economically viable region, not only for us that live in the forest, but for the city workers, for the country and for the whole world.'
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